That was Tuesday. By Friday, Trump had announced a 100 per cent tariff on pharmaceutical imports and Ley had issued a statement that the Coalition “strongly opposes the imposition of tariffs on Australia by the US, and we stand ready to help the government in any way”.
She described the pharma tariffs as a “shocking but unsurprising development”. There will be many more. The Liberals need to be careful that they’re not trapped on the wrong side of the next one. Or the one after that, and the many more to follow.
On the same day, in another shocking but unsurprising development, a Trump-appointed district attorney had brought charges against the former director of the FBI, James Comey. As Trump had demanded publicly.
The case against Comey is so feeble that even the previous Trump-appointed district attorney in the same jurisdiction had refused to prosecute him. So Trump removed Erik Siebert last Friday. The new appointment, Lindsey Halligan, had no such scruples. She was a personal lawyer to Trump. She acted immediately in this naked political purge.
This is precisely what an authoritarian consolidation of power looks like. And we are not yet even one-quarter into Trump’s term.
If pursued, Ley’s Tuesday formula that “Australia’s national interest … aligns us with our major ally” will lead the Liberals to disaster. Or, more accurately, to deeper disaster.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley described the pharma tariffs as a “shocking but unsurprising development”. There are bound to be more shocks to come.Credit: Chris Hopkins
As the Coalition should have learnt at the last election, any identification with Trump is repulsive to the Australian electorate. Peter Dutton merely flirted with a Trumpian association. It mortally wounded the Coalition.
To remind. Dutton had been a little too happy to associate himself with the man he called “a big thinker”. And when Trump aimed his “Liberation Day” tariff cannon at Australia, the effect on voters was immediate. According to former Liberal strategist and now RedBridge consultant Tony Barry, it was “a hammer blow”. He was conducting focus groups at the time. “I don’t think people realise what a massive impact that has had.”
It’s not just that Trump has overturned the values of the Republican Party, though he’s done that pretty comprehensively. A traditional Republican, Peter Wehner, who served in the White House under three Republican presidents – Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush – explains: “A party that formerly proclaimed allegiance to the Constitution and the rule of law, warned about the concentration and abuse of power, and championed virtue, restraint, and moral formation has been transmogrified. The Republican Party now stands for everything it once loathed. The significance of this shift can hardly be overstated.”
Trump has gone much further. He showcased this week that he is not only overturning Republican values, American constitutionalism and democratic norms. The world’s greatest power is at war with the scientific revolution launched by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543 and the values of the Enlightenment itself.
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He told the leaders of some 150 nations to their faces that they’re “stupid” for swallowing the climate “hoax” while advising against childhood vaccinations and Tylenol (the painkiller Australians know as paracetamol) taken by pregnant women on the unfounded claim that they cause autism.
This is not entirely new from Trump but shouldn’t inure us to the fact that he is leading the world’s most powerful state in a rejection of empiricism, evidence and expertise. By promoting crank science and conspiracy theories, he’s championing pre-Copernican obscurantism, in the phrase memorably deployed by Paul Keating three decades ago.
Copernicus gave birth to the scientific revolution by daring to observe that the sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of the solar system. Trump has asserted himself as the centre, the “sun king” around whom all else orbits, Truth Social transcending all other truths.
He fired the general in charge of the Defence Intelligence Agency for delivering an empirical assessment of battle damage in Iran, the national statistician for publishing an inconvenient truth on employment figures, the expert leading the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention for pursuing scientific fact.
Trump is revolting against the Age of Reason. Is this really where the Coalition wants to take us with a blind allegiance to the new US agenda? No responsible leader could follow the US into wild superstition and authoritarian fiat.
But which Australian values does Trump share? Democracy? No. He’s never recognised the 2020 election result, never agreed to accept the 2024 election result unless he was the winner, repeatedly toys with the idea of staying in power beyond his term, and admires dictators and disdains democrats.
What about the once-shared commitment to liberty, another Enlightenment value? No. He’s asked his generals to shoot unarmed protesters, denied basic rights to immigrants suspected of being illegal and even fully legal ones, threatened to cancel TV broadcast licences over political criticism, and sued multiple media outlets for astronomical sums to silence unwelcome news.
Trump has broken precedent with all post-war US leaders by undermining American-made instruments of multilateralism, the idea that countries can work together to solve shared problems. He’s withdrawn the US from the World Health Organisation and a range of UN bodies while criticising the UN in its own chambers. Not that the UN should be immune to criticism. In some of its key functions, it has failed miserably. But rather than reform it as needed, Trump enjoys merely reviling it.
And he’s once again undercut another US creation, NATO. The headlines this week were about how Trump appeared to have withdrawn support from Russia and thrown it to Ukraine and Europe. The European members of NATO should shoot down Russian military assets that flew into their airspace, he told reporters.
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But wait. The critical question was the next one. Would the US deploy its own military assets in joint defence of European NATO members, he was asked. “Depends on circumstances,” he replied. In other words, he declined to support America’s solemn treaty obligation under Article 5 of NATO to automatic mutual defence. That’s the real story here. Trump doesn’t believe in US alliances.
There was much commentary in Australia this week on the fact that Albanese was at the UN championing policies that are at odds with Trump’s. On climate change, on the recognition of a Palestinian state, on protection of children against the harms of so-called social media. Yet, Australia is in the overwhelming majority of nations on the first two and leading a growing international movement on the third.
And it’s only the beginning of the fundamental rift between Australia and the US. What can Australia try to salvage from the relationship?
The Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove says that he expects that, despite the differences, “the alliance will survive Donald Trump because it serves both countries’ interests. For the US, Australia is a reliable ally; for Australia, the US is a powerful ally”.
In other words, even if we have no shared values, we still have a shared interest. He makes the point that while only 36 per cent of Australians polled earlier this year trust Trump to act responsibly in the world, eight in 10 think the alliance is important to Australian security.
Albanese told the UN this week: “It is not the Australian way to try and impose our values on other nations. But when we deal with the world, we bring our values with us.”
If Trump challenges any of Australia’s policies or values in front of the cameras during their summit next month, Albanese will be obliged to defend them. That will make him a hero in Australia. The Coalition needs to decide whether it stands for Australian values or whether it’s an accessory to autocracy.
